Suki Kim - The Interpreter

When she finally makes her way across the room and stands before the partition, she can hear a sort of humming from the other side. A staccato rumble, oddly youthful and cheery. She knocks before peering in, although the attempt is superfluous. Rocking in the armchair is a young man, with his feet up on the desk. His eyes are shut, his head bobbing to the Discman whose volume is high enough so that she can even make out the lyric. Some kind of rap. Hip-hop, he would insist. Obviously, calling out to him is useless, but she is uneasy about tapping him on the arm. She is standing there mulling over what to do next when, as if in a miracle, he opens his eyes and jumps out of his seat.

“Holy shit! You scared the shit out of me!” the young man screams, peeling the headset off his ears.

“I’m so sorry. I called you a couple of times, but you didn’t hear me.” Suzy panics as he flinches from her. “I really didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Fucking hell you didn’t; what the hell were you doing creeping up on me like that!”

“I was just… I didn’t know how to get your attention.”

“Yo, let’s forget it.” His face is turning red, as though he is embarrassed at getting so easily frightened. Then he reaches for the can of Coke on the desk and gulps it down, struck by sudden thirst. “Don’t tell my old man. He’ll whack me if he finds out I wasn’t minding the door.”

“It’s a deal, my lips are sealed,” she says in a conspiring whisper. His father must be the owner. Family business, not unusual.

“So what do you want? A table?” he says, looking her over once, not without a hint of amusement. He is barely twenty. Boys of his age, they have just one thing on their minds. Even when the woman is old enough to be their aunt.

“Are you open? Looks pretty dead to me,” she says, surveying the empty room.

“Sure, we’re open. I just haven’t bothered turning on all the lights yet. Too early, and no one’s here these days anyway. Why waste electricity?” He shrugs, strutting over to the wall to flick the switch. In an instant, the room turns fluorescent.

“Why no one these days?” Suzy asks, squinting her eyes as the white balls beam under sudden artificial bliss.

“Some trouble out in Flushing; the guys’re laying low,” he says, clicking the “Stop” button on his Discman.

“Can’t be good for business?”

“We’re used to it. It happens once in a while. Everyone crawls back sooner or later. This time, the deal’s bigger, so it’s taking longer,” he says with a purposeful toss of his hair, which is moussed into a ball of stiff spikes.

“How long has your father owned the place?” she asks cautiously.

“What’s up with twenty questions? What’re you, a cop or something?” he fires back, then stares hard at her for a minute or two before shaking his head. “Nope, you’re not a cop.”

“How can you tell?” She asks, half amused.

“Too fine to be one,” he says with a wink. “Lady cops are butt-ugly. No Charlie’s Angels around here. So you’re not one, not a chance. So why twenty questions?” The boy is sharp, doesn’t miss a thing. He knows how to use a compliment to get what he wants.

“I used to live around here, long time ago. Went to Astoria High for a while, and then Lincoln High, over on Queens Boulevard.” She wants him to know he can trust her. No funny business.

“Fucking hell, Lincoln High? I went there too! Well, didn’t quite graduate, but still… when did you go there?” the boy asks with a wide grin, as though he now considers her okay.

“You were just a kid.”

“No way, you don’t look much older than me.” He smiles slyly.

“I’m ancient; I was around when the KK was around.” She takes the risk.

“That’s old, ” he exclaims, teasingly.

“Told you!” Glancing at the room, she says, “Those guys, do they come around still?”

“Who? The KK?”

“Yeah. I know it’s been too long, but I was in the neighborhood and thought it’d be nice to see an old face or two,” she says, running her index finger along the edge of the table. It is easy to believe this. The familiar place of her youth. The friends long gone. Nostalgia is a powerful thing, even when made up.

“Not really, especially not since Flushing. The trail’s still hot. No one wants to get mixed up with a drug mess, you know. The cops are jumping on any Korean kids with a record, which is just about everyone who hangs out here.” He chuckles. “Even the room salon downstairs is slow these days. Mina’s bumming, she only took over the place not so long ago. Fucking hell, all those booties pining away.”

“Room salon?” A call-girl joint. The sort of establishment where hostesses sit around with clients and pour drinks. But “hostess” is really a code word for a prostitute. Implicit in the exorbitant entrance fee are girls as part of the deal.

“‘Seven Stars,’ right downstairs, didn’t you see it coming up? I guess it’s kinda easy to miss, they try to keep a low profile.”

“Seven Stars?”

“Don’t you remember?” the boy asks incredulously. “Used to be a major KK hangout, long before my old man’s time here.”

Seven Stars. Why does that sound familiar?

“So you here for old times’ sake? Why, the rain get to you?” he asks, as if noticing her wet clothes for the first time.

“The rain, yeah…” And the yellow flyer, she remembers, yes, the flyer. “Have you heard of a guy named DJ?” A long shot; the boy’s too young.

“DJ? What does he look like?”

Of course she has no idea. An orphan. The last one of the Fearsome Four. The one deported to Korea five years ago, the same month as her parents’ murder.

“Doesn’t matter, I guess. He got deported.”

“Deported? That’s fucked up. Fuck those INS assholes!” he says, shaking his head.

Whatever happened, happened too long ago. Whatever evidence has long been erased.

“So where’s your father?” Suzy asks, walking to the door.

“A dumb fight, a couple of weeks ago. He should’ve known better than trying to break up those punks,” he answers with feigned indifference. “He got shot.”

Suzy pauses, turning around.

“Yo, it’s no big deal. He’s not dead or anything, besides, he’s got me.” The boy puts on a tough voice, suddenly looking even younger than his baby face.

It is not until she is halfway down the stairs that she notices the silver dots engraved on the metal door on the second floor. Seven tiny stars in the shape of a loop. A logo. No letters next to it. No explanation. Just a plain circular arrangement of seven stars. She tries the intercom, a neon-green button to the right of the door frame. No answer. Not surprising. If it’s too early for a pool hall, definitely sleeptime for a bar. The door will not budge. The video camera glares down like a hawk, patrolling from a corner of the ceiling. The security system is no joke. With the sort of guys who frequent here, everything would have to be bulletproof.

A loop of seven stars. Common enough, not particularly memorable. Yet Suzy is sure she has seen it before. But where ?

She lingers for a while. The staircase is mute, fully cemented, and dim. Not much use standing here. She makes her way down the steps slowly, hoping that someone will emerge. She keeps looking back at the door, but no one is there. Then she is outside again. Out in the torrential rain.

No umbrella. She is about to run into the Korean market to get one when she notices the warm glow from Santos Pizza. It is inviting, this pizzeria in deepest Queens, right below the pool hall. Like a candlelit cottage in a fairy tale, made of cakes. She could be one of the lost siblings, Hansel or Gretel, following the bread crumbs through the haunted forest.